


between the woods and frozen lake

by BlackBlood1872



Series: sing along if you know the words [2]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Awkwardness, Basira Hussain is a Mechanism, Episode Related, Established Relationship, M/M, MAG 176 Blood Ties, Post-Apocalypse, Post-MAG 176, Singing, Spoilers for The Magnus Archives Season 5, The Hunt, The Mechanisms Were The Archivist's College Band, hand holding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:42:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25946047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackBlood1872/pseuds/BlackBlood1872
Summary: "Prove it," Basira demands. "Prove you're really Jon."Jon takes a deep breath—and starts to sing.'Is now really the time?'Martin thinks somewhat hysterically.In another world, an identity check goes a bit differently.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Series: sing along if you know the words [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1879174
Comments: 7
Kudos: 231





	between the woods and frozen lake

**Author's Note:**

> Absent tag: "MAG 177 Speculation". Mostly because I _don't_ think this will happen so it's just AU. Opening dialogue borrowed directly from MAG 176
> 
> Title from the poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost.

Basira stares them down, as still and resolute as stone. The gun is raised and pointed straight at Martin, and he knows if she wanted to, he'd be dead before he ever heard the gunshot. She looks so similar to the last time he saw her, and yet entirely different. This world has changed her. It's changed all of them, but he never realised before just how much that change differed between them and those who had to live with the terror, rather than watch from the side.

Basira shifts her focus away from him and onto Jon, her gun trailing a second behind. "What about you?"

"I mean," Jon starts, going to shrug but stopping himself before he can do more than twitch. He looks relaxed, more so than he has any right to be, in Martin's opinion, and his voice is bright with a poorly restrained laugh. "I can know _literally_ anything so… ask away, I guess."

"You understand how unhelpful that is for proving identities," she states. Jon does shrug this time, lips pulling into a smile.

"I'm sorry to be an inconvenience," he says, not sounding sorry in the least. Martin wants to _shake him_.

"Well, you'd better think of something, or," she stops there, letting the sight of her gun shifting to aim at his forehead speak for her. Jon watches her for a moment, expression leveling out into something solemn. _Finally_.

Jon takes a deep breath—and starts to sing.

_'Is now really the time?'_ Martin thinks somewhat hysterically.

Jon takes on a different accent this time, one that Martin's never heard before, even with Jon's new habit of singing under his breath during the downtime of this journey. This one makes him think of gangsters, despite never hearing one outside of television. It's gravelly and kind of skeevy and it's _so strange_ to hear from Jon.

_"So take my hand and let's get outta here,  
"Uncle Mickey will show ya the way.  
"We can use your pyromaniacal talents,  
"Ashes, what d'ya say?"_

Basira stares him down. Jon stares back, chin tilted up. And, slowly, smirks. Like he's _challenging_ her.

Basira narrows her eyes. And then she straightens up and _sings back_.

_"Well, all eleven years of my life,  
"I've been alone, and now there's you.  
"So hand me the matches and the gasoline,  
"'cause we've got work to do."_

Martin has no fucking clue what's going on anymore. Not a new feeling, given the literal apocalypse happening around them, but this tops even that somehow.

"What." he says flatly, so done.

Basira sighs and tucks her gun into the holster under her arm. "Prick," she mutters, and Jon's shoulders slump, smirk evening out into that small grin he's been poorly curbing this whole time. Martin drops his arms with a grumble, barely audible complaints about _whatever_ this new nonsense is.

Basira doesn't acknowledge him. "Come on, we're wasting time," she says, turning to head back the way she came. She stalks into the woods without waiting to see if they're following.

"Wh— Hey, wait!"

"I _said_ , come on!"

Martin turns to Jon, lips pressed into a firm line, eyes wide and eyebrows up. He would like _some_ sort of answer, now, please.

Jon gives him a sheepish look and shrug, which is very much _not_ an answer. Martin briefly considers the benefits of pressing the matter, then decides against it. The longer he stands here, the more the trees seem to loom over him; the more it feels like he's being watched, _stalked_ , seconds away from coming face to face with the maw of a monster ready to devour him without hesitation.

Basira pointedly snaps a twig under her boot. Martin lets out the breath he hadn't realised he was holding, and it shakes, rattles out from his lungs and through him like a death blow. Jon takes his hand and squeezes his fingers, grounding and protective. Martin has never been able to find the right words to tell Jon how incredibly thankful he is, but he doesn't need to, does he? Jon knows. Even when he's doing his level best to be infuriating. Pros and cons.

They start walking.

* * *

Martin hangs back a few steps after they've been walking for probably fifteen tense minutes. Jon notices a second later and slows to meet him. "Is there a problem?" he asks, casting suspicious glances at the trees.

Martin shakes his head. "I'm just—confused? Basira asked you to confirm your identity and you started _singing_. And then _she_ started singing, and I just. I don't know why and neither of you have even tried to explain it."

Jon, who had caught Martin's eyes when he started speaking, can't seem to look at him now. He's fidgety, gaze darting around the woods, fingers twisting together. He's _nervous_ , and Martin doesn't know why. He narrows his eyes. Jon winces as if he'd seen it.

"Okay, look—" he starts, hushed, hunching down so he's even shorter than usual. He stares hard at Basira's back but she just keeps walking, gun held in both hands and scanning the brush on either side of the path. She doesn't look back or show any sign of hearing them, but Martin isn't convinced she _can't_. Jon grumbles like he doesn't believe it either, but continues anyway. "You remember when I told you about my band? In uni? Well…"

"Don't tell me Basira was part of it," Martin says, incredulous.

…actually, Martin kind of prefers this option. He can't even imagine how he'll react if she's a _fan_.

Jon shrugs with a weird smile.

"She played Ashes O'Reilly, quartermaster. The band kind of fell apart when we all graduated and went our separate ways and I never really tried to follow up on anyone after the first few years. Believe me, I was shocked to see her after we found Gertrude. I never even knew she went into training!

"I'm not _ashamed_ of The Mechanisms, but it's not something I was going to bring up in the workplace. And she never tried either. So it was easy to just… ignore our shared past and pretend like we've never met before, because, if you really think about it, we hadn't? Not these versions of us, anyway. We're different people than we were when we were playing at space pirates, and it's not like anyone else knew. Who was going to say anything? What did it matter?"

Jon punctuates his impromptu rant with a shrug and a plaintive expression like, _"what can you do?"_

Martin stops walking and stares blankly for a moment. Jon also stops, and Basira makes an annoyed noise, turning back to glare at them. Martin shakes his head, as if it'll rattle something loose. "Sorry, _space pirates_?"

"Didn't I mention that?" Jon asks uncomfortably, sounding exactly like he knew he never mentioned that.

"No, you did not. You called it, and I quote, 'a storytelling musical cabernet'. There was no mention of _space pirates_."

"Well, now you know," Jon says lightly. "The Mechanisms were a band of immortal space pirates, roaming the universe and telling tales, having fun and violence wherever possible. We made a couple albums and then we broke up, and now the world is broken and it doesn't really matter, does it? Let's just. Get to wherever Basira is taking us and plan our next move. Regarding the _actual_ apocalypse happening?"

"I know what you're doing and I _will_ be asking you a hundred questions later," Martin assures. Jon keeps dropping interesting and surprising facts and then steamrolling onwards, as if giving too much information at once will confuse him enough to make him drop the subject. Jokes on him, though; Martin has a very good memory and he's going to remember and pick over every new fact he's learning about his partner, and nothing Jon does will stop him.

"I look forward to it," Jon says dryly.

"Don't fall behind," Basira calls. Martin turns to see her standing a few metres ahead of them, and while she's obviously braced to counter an attack from any angle, she's staring him dead in the eyes, entirely unamused. He gives her a mild smile but all she does is turn around and start walking again. Martin sighs.

A hand takes hold of his, and when Martin turns to look, Jon smiles at him. "Come on," he whispers. He tugs on their entwined hands, pulling Martin forward, and they continue on.

* * *

Basira stops at the edge of a small clearing, trees giving up space for a house, ramshackle but still standing. Rustic but sturdy. It's the exact sort of thing you'd picture when you think of a cabin in the woods.

Martin… really isn't surprised to see it.

Basira does a quick check of the perimeter before waving them into the house, keeping a sharp eye on the forest while they squeeze past her.

The cabin is sparsely decorated, even less so than the safe house had been, most of the space being taken up by boxes of supplies and a frankly alarming amount of weaponry. The walls are bare and the floor has one rug, a ragged thing spread out in front of the hearth. A small fire lights the room and does nothing to warm it.

Basira closes the door and locks it (using all five different types of lock), and it's in that moment that the sound of crackling fills the air like a living thing. It's unfortunately familiar. Jon takes a deep breath, eyes closed, and the sound changes pitch on the exhale. When he opens his eyes, the green of his irises glow in the dim light of the cabin. He turns to Basira and lifts the tape recorder in his hands; it's already running.

"I need to… record a statement. Can I—" he gestures further into the small building. Basira stares him down, critical, her lips pressed thin.

"Fine," she decides. "Don't take too long."

Jon nods and slips into the bedroom, leaving the door ajar. Martin can still hear him, but he can't make out any of the words. It'll have to do.

There's only one place to sit that Martin can see, a plain wooden table with benches along the sides and chairs at the ends. Martin falls onto one of these benches while Basira circles the room, eventually stopping at the chair facing the front door. She doesn't sit right away, instead rifling through her pockets and pulling out, first, a square of cloth that she lays out, then an assortment of knives. Martin doesn't want to know where she was keeping all of them.

"I can't believe you were in a _band_ together," Martin grumbles. Basira sets her gun on the table with more force than necessary and Martin jumps at the sound, snapping his gaze up to her face. She stares back, steady and disinterested.

"So?" she says, and it's not a growl but it still makes Martin shiver. A clear _back off_ even though it's phrased like a casual question.

"Noth-nothing," Martin tries not to squeak. He's _passed that_ , thank you. "Just. Surprised! You don't seem like the... type."

"Yeah, well, people change."

Basira sits. She starts cleaning the gun, taking it apart and setting all the pieces in deliberate places; motions almost ritual in their precision. Martin stares at the tabletop and tries not to fidget.

Jon joins them after an indeterminate amount of awkward silence, sitting down next to Martin and slumping forward, elbows braced on the table. The bench is long enough to fit three people comfortably, but Jon chooses to sit close; their shoulders bumping together and their legs forming a line of warmth that Martin doesn't think he'll ever get used to. He wants to breach those few centimetres between them and grab Jon's hand, lace their fingers together. As always, it takes him a second to realise that he _can_ do that, and so he does.

And as always, Jon squeezes his hand and smiles, so remarkably tender it makes him ache.

"All done?" Basira asks, keeping her gaze laser focused on her task. Jon hums. In a series of motions too quick for Martin to follow, she reassembles the gun and sets it aside. "Great. Then let's talk."

**Author's Note:**

> Song used: [Lucky Sevens](https://youtu.be/DVOErBv_CE4)  
> Do you ever listen to and really like a song, but not hear any of the lyrics? (Me. I do that.) Because Jon's been singing every day since the Slaughter and Martin never analysed those songs close enough to realise they were space pirates lol
> 
> Some physical descriptors that I hinted at: Jon is shorter than Martin. Jon's eyes changed after MAG 160; they're now a light/pale green with black sclera. Previously hazel. I actually describe it in a different wip but just know I saw a comic with it and latched on hard. Edit: found the comic and traced sources and it seems this was [luffballoon99](https://luftballons99.tumblr.com)'s hc. I hc Jon as still having long hair, but that's not super important.


End file.
